For more than 6 months this has been a Japan-oriented blog (with a little venture into India and China, here and there). Tonight I draw (a little bit) outside the lines (see the Japan tie-in just below) and say, “Roll Tide, Roll!”

I should note that many, many Japanese grads of Chiba-dai, Kansai Gaidai (me, ’84), Nanzan Dai and other Japan-base colleges have attended The University of Alabama. That JVC (Nihon Victor) has a manufacturing plant in Tuscaloosa, that Honda has a plant in Lincoln/Talladega, Alabama, that Toyota has a plant in Huntsville, Alabama and that Sony is in Dothan.

Alabama Rolls over Florida, 32-13, to win the Southeast Conference Championship and go to the National Title Game in Pasadena, California.

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From summer of ’84, a present given to me by a group of Chiba University students with whom I whiled away 6 weeks on the UA campus. A week after they gave me this flag I was on a plane to Japan, my first overseas trip, to begin my Exchange Student Experience at Kansai Gaidai (a university between Osaka and Kyoto).

Going home gift from Chiba U students. Summer '84.

I got together with these same students, my friends, for a night in Los Angeles (they were spending a week in California on their way back to Japan, I arranged a one-night layover) and, then, a couple of months later I traveled up to Chiba University (just north or Tokyo) to hang out with them for a weekend on their home turf. Several of them remain dear friends who I see from time-to-time when I’m in Japan, or when they are on business in the U.S. All brought together through distance and over time via the University of Alabama.